Do You Want Fries With That?

April 10, 2024 – Day 25

Cracker Barrel, Joplin Missouri – Route 66 To Go, Elk City, Oklahoma

We woke up fairly early in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel, did a quick check (all kidneys intact) and headed out. Today was a much shorter day at 335 miles, but still not a short day. But with an early leave time we could make it to our Harvest Host in Elk City OK, hit up the Route 66 Museum, and grab what we needed at a grocery store ending with dinner at our Harvest Host, the Route 66 ToGo diner. Suspenseful music plays. It wasn’t a diner.

One nice thing about Cracker Barrel and Harvest Host camping aside from the “free” price is that you don’t unhook your the car you’re towing. You leave early because there’s nothing to do and nothing to put away. It’s not unusual to find us leaving at 8:30 or so. Paul is tempted to try the CB breakfast one more time. Susan is ~~unsure~~ unwilling. Our last breakfast was bad. Not just “Well we’ll try it again.” bad. It was a “Never again.” bad. How can eggs, toast, & bacon be that bad? The last one we ate at showed us that that was possible. So we ate cereal (Paul) and toast, guac & tomatoes, (Susan) and hit the road early.

We drove under this amazing structure in Vinita MO.

Why does Vinita get this arch? Yeah, it’s fun, but the people who design rest areas don’t do it for fun. When looking at the pictures for the blog Paul thought for sure this was a state border crossing. It isn’t. It’s just Vinita MO. I think we’re supposed to park on the right and walk to the rest area on the left. Sure, that’s fine except if you’re trying to make up 1,000 miles. Bye Vinita!

Highways cross each other, they have bridges, overpasses, underpasses, tunnels, ferries and probably fluffy dragons that carry you, carefully, in their mouth across volcanic chasms. But these things all need to be built. Overpasses being built are weird looking. Thanks Tulsa, these robots will haunt our dreams.

We pulled into Elk City MO in the early afternoon and saw this cool oil rig. It didn’t belong downtown, and it wasn’t moving or rusted, was it a museum piece?

There was also a statue across the street of two people on horses, probably a museum or something. This is our constant battle. Do we stop and check it out? But if we do, we risk getting in very late.

Oh, BTW, Rig 144 is one of the world’s tallest oi rigs. Who knew?

At 181 feet (17 stories), Parker Drilling Rig #114 is one of the world’s tallest oil rigs. The rig was originally built in the 1960’s to drill shafts for underground nuclear testing and later was used for discovering oil. It currently stands at the center of Elk City at 3rd Street (Historic Route 66) and Madison. It dominates the Elk City Skyline.

So, shouldn’t it be one of the world’s tallest nuclear rigs? Now that we know the history, we kind of wish we had stopped!

We drove past the Route 66 Museum. There was a cool fifties car there, white over teal, attached to a vintage camper, painted the same. Paul really wanted to check that out. But we had to get situated at the Harvest Host first. It was pretty easy to do, the parking lot was huge and mostly level.

Then it was off to the museum but the vintage car and trailer were gone, they were just travelers!

We had to pay to get in, $4 was the discounted price for seniors. They didn’t even ask for ID! Then to the gift shop for a magnet and a T-shirt for Paul and then into the museum proper.

The museum is spread over 2-3 acres with 15-20 buildings. Some are museum exhibits you can walk through and others you just peer into the windows. We took a million photos. We uploaded too many of them so just sit back and scroll.

They had two old cars setup, for the drive-in movie experience.

By this point we were commenting to each that this was a nice museum. A very well done museum. Unlike the trains museum which had too many words, and the Aquarium which didn’t have a enough—how can you have an exhibit on Fundulus without going into their breeding habits?—this museum hit it just right. There was a lot to see and just the right amount to read. It was more like a walk through your elders’ home than a museum exhibit.

We peered into the town doctor’s office. We can’t remember but we think we read that these facilities were used into the 50s. Neither of us would like to be a patient in those circumstances!

There is the red brick school room that was used into the mid 1970s.

See the display in the lower left? Here’s the text:

1872 RULES FOR TEACHERS

Teachers each day will fill lamps, dean chimneys.

Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s
session.

Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.

Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.

After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books.

Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.

Every teacher should lay aside from each day pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden to society.

Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public hall or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.

The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.

The bank. Susan looked for an ATM. They didn’t have one.

The church seemed to be still in use.

An early house. Not the first wooden one, we saw that earlier, it was tiny, actually much smaller than the RV we have. But this next one was 2 stories and you could walk through.

Susan was dismayed, and rightfully so, to find one of the creepy mannequins knitting, with plastic needles. There wouldn’t have been plastic needles until much later.

There were a lot of buildings, we can’t show them all. But they had a train caboose and Paul climbed to the top seat! (susan here: Hey John, are you jealous?)

Paul tried to buy a train ticket but the attendant ignored him.

But Susan distracted the telegraph operator who is way to polite to say, “Hey N1PCZ, this is the telegraph room, tickets are over there, behind the cutie who’s distracting me. 73″

A general store…

A soda fountain

This was a big museum. We were about 2/3rds of the way through and were getting museum’d out. We rushed through a lot of the rest, but we needed to. There’s only so much of early 1900s Oklahoma one needs to know about.

Then it was across the street for groceries and back home to the RV. It was time for dinner. Susan had been warning Paul that “It’s just a burger joint.” She was right. The Pulled Pork was ok, the pizza was about as good as you would get from the frozen aisle at Market Basket, especially if you choose poorly. Come to think of it the pulled pork might have been a deli aisle special. You know what we mean? That’s to say we’ve had better (lots better!) and we’ve had much (much!) worse. Oh well, the site was level, we had a good museum adventure, plus a good night’s sleep in a safe spot and we were on the road early.